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Dear Friends,
On Friday, I requested the resignation of Montgomery County Department of Police (MCPD) Chief Marc Yamada. I thank Chief Yamada for nearly four decades of service to MCPD and the residents of Montgomery County.
My decision followed the findings of an investigation by the County’s independent Office of the Inspector General (IG). The investigation substantiated violations of County and MCPD expectations regarding time away from work, including failing to take appropriate leave or adjust his schedule as required by MCPD policy. More concerning to me were the findings regarding the accuracy of the Chief’s statements to the IG during the investigation.
Trust and integrity are fundamental to public service, particularly for those entrusted with leading our police department. We expect our employees to follow established policies, and we have an even greater responsibility to hold those in leadership positions to the highest standards. Based on the findings of this investigation, I determined that a change in leadership was necessary.
We take all findings by the Inspector General seriously and have already taken action to address the recommendations contained in the report. We will also make sure our policies are clear, consistently followed, and enforced throughout County government.
I have selected Assistant Chief Darren Francke to serve as Acting Chief of Police until a permanent Chief is appointed. I have confidence that Acting Chief Francke will provide stability and leadership for the department during this transition.
Throughout my time as County Executive, I have endeavored to recognize the professionalism, dedication, and resilience demonstrated every day by the men and women of our police department.
I want to affirm our deep appreciation for everyone in the police department who continues to serve our community with integrity, compassion, and an unwavering commitment to public safety. Your work makes a meaningful difference in residents’ lives, and I am proud of everything you do in the service of this County.
Our Pursuit of a Zero Waste Future
This week, the Council began a series of briefings and conversations about the future of solid waste management in Montgomery County. I want to thank the Council for addressing this issue.
We are at a crossroads, with choices ahead.
It is not a simple question of whether to burn our trash and bury the ash. Or put it on trucks and bury it all somewhere else. The question we should focus on is what kind of waste system Montgomery County wants to have over the next 20 or 30 years?
We need a system that provides financial and environmental incentives that prioritize zero waste. Reduce our trash up front. Reuse what we have. Recycle as much as possible and then dispose of what’s left.
Right now, we have an aging incinerator in Dickerson with a contract that will expire soon. And we currently send our ash to a landfill in a poor, minority community. Keeping it operating will require either a major overhaul or a complete rebuild. Either way, it will cost hundreds of millions of dollars in fixed costs.
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The Zero Waste hierarchy prioritizes waste reduction first–produce less trash, like the plastic bag ban the Council passed. Reuse is second–don’t throw it away, reuse it or take it to the transfer station or elsewhere to be reused; recycling, including food composting, is third.
I have a proposal that would prioritize Zero Waste. While it does include taking trash to a landfill to be buried, it also includes multiple strategies to continually reduce the trash we produce and reuse and recycle as much as possible of our waste.
And as we reduce our waste, we can reduce our costs of landfilling because those costs are based on the amount of waste we bury. That is not true for an incinerator. Once we invest those fixed costs for a major upgrade or rebuild, those costs remain, no matter how much we reduce our trash. We should be investing fixed costs in technology that can keep reducing the trash; multiple technologies exist and operate successfully.
It’s true that we are currently working on reduction, reuse, and recycling. That’s the system we need to continue to build, but there’s much more to do. Long-haul disposal will continue even with a major overhaul of the incinerator. If we choose a different path, then long haul becomes a bridge, not the destination.
And we absolutely need to know where our waste is going, what the environmental standards are at those facilities, and what impact our decisions have on other communities. Those issues will be scrutinized in a new system, and they need to examined today.
Incinerating trash doesn’t make it disappear. It produces bad emissions and leaves ash that still must be transported and disposed of. In fact, our ash is currently disposed of at a landfill in a low-income and minority community.
Our Dickerson residents have dealt with the impact of our waste system for decades. So, I don’t think the appropriate comparison is simply the price of burning one ton of garbage versus the cost of disposing of one ton elsewhere. We need to look at the full “life cycle” costs and the full environmental impact.
The question is: how do we create a system that rewards the behavior we need–waste reduction, reuse, and recycling?
We need to use this moment to create a system designed from the beginning to reduce the waste stream. If we can reduce the amount of material requiring disposal by 20%, then 40%, and eventually 50% or more, what’s being sent away to a landfill can be reduced. That’s better for the environment, and over time, it changes the economics as well. And the more waste that we recycle, the more economic value we can create.
Today, while the County recycles many items, too many recyclable materials come in through bulk trash pickups. As of now, we don’t reclaim anything from those mixed loads. Introducing advanced sorting equipment and creating streams of glass, plastics, and metals that can be pulled out of the mixed waste that comes in would be extremely useful because those items have a market. We can recover food waste, recycle it, and produce gases that have commercial value. Encouraging more food scraps recycling helps the County create better mulch, which improves its retail value. The County sells a lot of mulch.
Either path will require some additional cost during the transition; however, it will likely be small for each household–less than $20 per household per year. Let’s be willing to make a modest investment today if it allows us to build a cleaner and more sustainable system that produces less waste and gives the County greater flexibility in the future.
Don’t forget, there’s an economic opportunity here as well. Recycling, composting, reuse, materials recovery, and advanced processing can create jobs here in Montgomery County instead of treating everything we throw away as something that simply needs to be burned or buried.
I understand that this is a big decision, and I hope we will seriously consider what system makes sense for Montgomery County’s long-term future.
I don’t want us to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in infrastructure whose economics depend on Montgomery County continuing to produce large quantities of garbage, and that does not provide the incentives to create a greener community.
I want us to build a system whose success is measured by how little garbage we have left to dispose of. That’s the direction we’ve said we want to go. And that’s the direction I believe we should take.
National Preparedness Month
This week, I joined the County Council for a proclamation to highlight the importance of being prepared for an emergency. You can watch that ceremony on the Council’s YouTube page. That can mean anything that threatens our homes or our lives, like thunderstorms, floods, extreme heat, or extreme cold. Preparedness isn’t complicated, but it does require thinking ahead. Know your risks. Have a plan. Put together a basic emergency kit. Know who in your neighborhood might need help if something happens. These are simple steps that make a real difference.
The County is treating Emergency Preparedness Month a bit differently this year, participating in dozens of community events and pop-up locations through early October to educate our residents and encourage them to take part in our community preparedness survey. You can find a list of those events at montgomerycountymd.gov/npm.
Recently, we made a change to our Alert Montgomery system, allowing more people who speak a language other than English to use it. The new translation service applies to all our emergency messaging targeting the languages most frequently used by County residents who speak another language at home, including Spanish, Amharic, Chinese, and French. You can sign up for those translations on this Alert Montgomery website.
More than 266,000 people are currently subscribed to Alert Montgomery to receive urgent notifications, making it Maryland’s largest emergency alert system. Language should never prevent someone from receiving potentially lifesaving information. I appreciate our Office of Emergency Management and Homeland Security (OEMHS), our County translation team, and the community partners who will help us improve this free service and make sure residents know it is available.
We all have a role to play in keeping our community safe from natural threats. Volunteers play a crucial role through organizations such as the County’s Community Organizations Active in Disaster, Community Emergency Response Teams, the American Red Cross, the Montgomery County Medical Reserve Corps, and the Food Council in helping neighbors during a disaster. You can also access resources, such as preparedness information, at any time of the year on OEMHS’s planning website.
It’s hard to put aside the fact that after devastating weather in Western Maryland a few years ago, there was no FEMA help available. That is astounding and a sign that we may be on our own when bad weather strikes.
I want to thank Luke Hodgson, our director of Emergency Management and Homeland Security, and specialist Matt Miziorko for joining me for my media briefing this week. Because of the work done by OEMHS, we have 40 flood sensors throughout the County to track data that helps us be as prepared as possible for disasters.
Hispanic Heritage Month
Hispanic Heritage Month began on Tuesday and runs through October 15. It is an important time in history, frankly, to show our support to our Hispanic community, which is why I’m glad our big community celebration is back on the calendar. Here are some things happening that I hope you share with your audience:
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- On Saturday, Sept. 19, the Wheaton Hispanic Heritage Month Unity Festival goes from noon to 4 p.m. at Marian Fryer Town Plaza in Wheaton. Wheaton’s restaurants, small businesses, and neighborhoods reflect the diversity of Montgomery County’s Latine community. The Unity Festival builds on that identity by bringing together residents, businesses, community organizations, and County partners. Come out for the food, music, cultural performances, and more.
- On Tuesday, Sept. 22, our Latin American Advisory Group will host a special event from 6 to 8 p.m. at the Leggett Executive Office Building in Rockville. It gives our community a chance to honor and recognize outstanding leaders who have helped others thrive in Montgomery County.
- On Friday, Sept. 25, I’ll be visiting a few Latine-owned businesses in East County—because supporting local businesses is one of the most tangible ways we can show up for this community.
- Tuesday, Sept. 29: I will be on ‘Montgomery al Día’, the County’s Spanish-language radio show. The show airs from 2 to 2:30 p.m. every Tuesday on Radio America 900. To listen live, visit radioamerica.net or the County’s Spanish Facebook page, Montgomery County en Español.
- On Thursday, Oct. 1, the Montgomery County and Morazán Sister Cities Committee hosts the 15th Annual Hispanic Heritage Month Gala at Glenview Mansion in Rockville. The event celebrates both Hispanic heritage and our longstanding relationship with Morazán, El Salvador. For event details and tickets, email SistercityMocoMorazan@gmail.com.
- Montgomery County Public Libraries will host programs throughout the month—author talks, music, family events, and a special collection of 75 children’s books celebrating Hispanic and Latine stories.
More than one in five Montgomery County residents identify as Hispanic or Latine. That’s not a footnote. That is a foundational part of who we are as a community. Generation after generation, Hispanic, and Latine residents have enriched our neighborhoods, built businesses, strengthened our schools, and brought their cultures and traditions to every corner of this County. This month is a chance to recognize that and celebrate it together.
Innovation with Montgomery County Government
This week at the Bright Spots Showcase, I got a chance to see how we are transforming local government to work better for every person in our community. Hundreds of people came together for another in a series of special events over my time as County Executive to share how they are improving our government. This approach is producing tangible impact across our government: over 350 of our colleagues have stepped into new roles as Accelerators – challenging how we’ve always done things around here through a structured problem-solving approach. At the showcase, 25 employees from 14 departments delivered 52 projects that returned about $112,000 a year in recovered staff time and direct costs. That is time and money going back into the services residents rely on.
At its core, our Innovation Team exists to support colleagues across Montgomery County government in deeply understanding challenges and redesigning how government serves our people. We believe in empowering our employees to improve their own processes and systems so that County services become more effective, efficient, and equitable. Our goal is to build a local government that is just, human, and liberating.
To drive this transformation, our team focuses on three key areas:
- More than 350 Accelerators have been through the program, many improving a process or service they influence under three rules: no new money, no new people, no new technology. We adapt tools from human-centered design, process improvement, and behavioral science directly to public service.
- By following a “bright spots” theory of change, we lift up leaders throughout our organization and give them autonomy and encouragement to make things better.
- Through hands-on Innovation Accelerator Courses, community coaching, and problem-solving training, we are equipping our workforce and supervisors to surface new ideas, launch prototypes, and practice failing forward while building meaningful connections across agencies.
Why look outside our government for cookie-cutter consultants when we can work across our many departments to find co-creators who help teams become more collaborative, inventive, and helpful to our residents?
Take Kendrick Saunders (center in the picture below) in our Department of Recreation. Every week, staff at 21 recreation centers used to drive a paper cash balance report to the main office across the County. Kendrick mapped that trip, questioned whether it needed to exist, and started the work that moved those reports to a secure electronic upload. The result, verified against real routing data: 22,284 miles a year no longer driven, 816 hours of staff time given back to the centers, 8.9 metric tons of carbon never emitted, and roughly $64,000 a year in staff time and direct costs recovered. No new money, no new staff, no new technology. Just one employee who was close enough to the work to see what was unnecessary.
Kendrick’s project is one of hundreds. Translation services for our website, easier access to applications, and a fix for frequent caller disconnects on our MC311 line are the kinds of projects that come out of this course, and they start the same way every time, with an employee close enough to the problem to see it and learning a structure to act on it.
By giving our workforce the tools and support to solve the problems they see on the job, we are accelerating the evolution of government to better serve all of Montgomery County. Employees inspired to lead change can find a way to do that on the Become an Accelerator page.
Death of Longtime Montgomery County Government Public Servant Charles L. “Chuck” Short
I was deeply saddened to learn of the death of Charles L. “Chuck” Short, who dedicated much of his career to serving the people of Montgomery County. Chuck was a thoughtful and compassionate public servant who understood that government has a responsibility to be there for people when they need help the most.
He joined the County in 1973 and was the director of the Department of Family Resources under County Executives Charles Gilchrist, Sidney Kramer, Neal Potter, and Doug Duncan.
As the first director of a combined Department of Health and Human Services, Chuck helped lead an agency that touches the lives of thousands of residents every day. He brought a strong commitment to human services and to making sure that our most vulnerable residents had access to the support and resources they needed. He retired from County service in 2002.
He returned in 2006 to serve as special assistant to County Executive Isiah “Ike” Leggett and continued to make important contributions.
Chuck understood that public service is ultimately about people. He cared deeply about Montgomery County and about making our community a better place. His contributions to our County will continue to be felt through the programs and services he helped strengthen and through the many people whose lives he touched.
As the father of an adult son with disabilities, Chuck brought a deep personal understanding to his work and spent his career helping build a community where everyone felt welcomed, valued, and included.
He lived his commitment to others in his private life as well, serving on the boards of several nonprofit organizations, including the Montgomery County Coalition for the Homeless.
I extend my deepest condolences to Chuck’s family, friends, and former colleagues. We are grateful for his service to Montgomery County, and we will remember him with great respect and appreciation.
As we enter the autumn season, there are plenty of opportunities to get out to enjoy our community. I hope you have a good weekend.
As always, my appreciation for all of you,
County Executive
Read the original article at mcgov
